Faculty of Social Sciences University of Helsinki Finland WEAPONIZED NEWS: RUSSIAN TELEVISION, STRATEGIC NARRATIVES AND CONFLICT REPORTING Irina Grigor DOCTORAL DISSERTATION To be presented for public discussion with the permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki, in Sali 2, Metsätalo (Unioninkatu 40), on the 30th of October, 2020 at 12 o’clock. Helsinki 2020 © Irina Grigor Cover photo: Natalya Letunova, Ivanovo, Russia. Photo from Unsplash (https://unsplash.com/photos/DLclPZyS_bs). ​ ​ ISBN 978-951-51-6636-4 (pbk) ISBN 978-951-51-6637-1 (PDF) Unigrafia Helsinki 2020 ABSTRACT ​ Russia has been involved in two major geopolitical conflicts in recent years: the Ukraine crisis and the civil war in Syria. Since Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine crisis in 2013-2014, many commentators have pointed to the effectiveness of the Russian strategic narratives to explain the support the Kremlin enjoys at home and abroad. Although Russia's use of information as a weapon is not new, in the light of the limited transparency of Russian strategic thinking, studying Russia’s discursive environment and, in particular, strategic narratives becomes critical. Therefore, the concept of strategic narrative plays a central role in assembling the main argument for this doctoral thesis. The concept provides a foundation for the analytical framework to explore a set of media frames purposefully embedded into television news to reinforce, subvert, undermine, overwhelm or replace a pre-existing discourse on a subject significant to both the audience and the ‘speaker’ that is often a political elite. The main focus of the dissertation is on the visuals employed in the Russian television news, which have received surprisingly little scholarly attention to date. A starting point is the desire to obtain a deeper understanding of how the Russian government’s complex and controversial political decisions are legitimized on television, and also, and most importantly, to determine what role images play in advancing the strategic narratives that justify violence, human costs and engagement in military conflicts. For that, I adopt three distinct perspectives. First is a comparative perspective, which contrasts the narratives produced for two different audiences — domestic and foreign. It also compares the strategic narratives constructed around two different conflicts — the military conflict in Eastern Ukraine and the civil war in Syria. Second is a retrospective perspective, which explores the narratives not only in terms of their current application but also as a process that has been evolving over a two-year period of time. Third, the dissertation employs a hybrid media perspective to explore the interactions between mainstream media and social media. These three perspectives, in combination, encompass a comprehensive and longitudinal investigation of Russian strategic narratives as a representation of the weaponized information. The combination of qualitative and quantitative methods adds ‘depth’ and ‘breadth’ dimensions to the dissertation’s analytical spectrum. 3 The thesis represents a compilation of four articles. Each article illuminates one of three perspectives adopted in the dissertation. The articles highlight the results which demonstrate that the approach adopted in this dissertation is important for several reasons. First, while much of the media and international relations literature focuses on projection or reception of strategic narratives, there is almost no research which offers deep insights into strategic narrative as a process that can develop or be modified over the course of time to account for changes in political goals or target audiences. What happens to a dominant, established strategic narrative when the context changes? This dissertation aims to fill this gap by studying Russia’s dominant strategic narratives in television news from comparative, retrospective and hybrid media perspectives. Second, this dissertation argues that strategic narratives gain their power through images that invoke collective emotions and ideas, like sympathy or aversion while reinforcing existing political myths, cultural stereotypes and historical memory. Thus, the thesis conceptualises visual images as affective anchors that can be used to reactivate collective memory and dominant discourses and construct emotional relationships between the audiences and mediated events. Finally, wartime images studies anticipate, but rarely empirically examine the television images that are employed to mediate the contemporary conflicts. This dissertation extends the understanding of how the Russian television visually mediates the conflicts to advance the state’s interpretation of the events and justify the country’s involvement in the international conflicts to domestic and global audiences. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ​ After almost six years of working on this research project, I couldn’t possibly come up with a full list of all people who had helped me. Actually, this project was my second try, since I started as a PhD student at the University of Helsinki even earlier, back in 2009. In a few years, though, a tragic event and my personal burnout made me have a break, after which I started again from a new page and with two new supervisors. I have come to the conclusion that writing a PhD thesis is not supposed to be easy and does require quite a lot of what Finns call sisu, and also strong commitment and, above all, a number of special people around. I am tremendously thankful to every single person who has been near, giving me their time, comments or warm words of encouragement during years of my PhD journey. There is one name, however, I would like to mention first - Mervi Pantti. I owe my deepest gratitude to my main supervisor, Professor Mervi Pantti. Even before Mervi agreed to be my supervisor, I already had the reasons to be thankful to her. I was an international student, and the first months of my stay in Finland were particularly challenging for me. Besides, I got pregnant with my first child. That time Mervi was one of a few people supporting and encouraging me not only as a student but also as a human being. It was a sorrowful loss that brought me in the circumstances, where I asked Mervi to become my supervisor. She kindly agreed, even though I decided to change my research topic completely for something that got crucial for me. My parents lived in Ukraine and all my thoughts were there while the Ukraine crisis was unfolding. Mervi helped me start afresh and design a plan to reach my research goals. Since then, Mervi has been supervising my research, and if I have ever been efficient, this is because of her extensive support, theoretical insights and a lot of her smart sharp comments, intelligent questions, sense of humour and warmest encouragement. Besides, Mervi was a very demanding co-author. It was tough, honestly, but, after all, only her bright comments and persistent guidance taught me to write academic articles, most of which built the ground for this dissertation. Thank you, Mervi, for all of this and above. Thank you A LOT. Hannu Nieminen, Professor Emeritus. My second supervisor and one ​ of the wisest, kindest people I have ever met. Hannu was always ready to discuss my matters and encourage me with his positive attitudes and 5 meaningful comments. Thank you, Hannu, for inspiring, supporting and connecting me with other wonderful people. I felt absolutely privileged to be in your team while organizing international conferences and other academic events. Thank you for giving me this valuable opportunity to fulfil myself as an event organizer, and for sharing with me your enthusiasm and hope for the best every time I speak with you. Sinikka Sassi, whom I will always remember with my vast gratitude, ​ utmost respect and a touch of bitterness. Sinikka was my first supervisor when I started in 2009. From the very beginning, she was endlessly kind and supportive. Sinikka was the one who first believed that I could become a PhD researcher and gave me this precious chance to try. I remember her helping me with every matter, whether it was about my living or studying. Sinikka’s kindness, support and care were priceless. Thank you so much, dear Sinikka, I wish you were here to witness that I have finally made it. I would like to say my special thank you to Liudmila Voronova, Senior ​ ​ Lecturer in Journalism and Vera Zvereva, Senior Lecturer in Russian ​ ​ Language and Culture for their time to read and assess this work at the pre-examination stage. Your encouraging, insightful comments and valuable suggestions helped me improve my dissertation and make my arguments stronger. Besides, your own academic publications served as my navigation in the area of Russia’s journalism culture, media system and digital media studies. I am privileged and happy to have you as my pre-examiners. I am extremely pleased and grateful that Katja Lehtisaari, Docent and ​ ​ University Lecturer at the University of Tampere, has agreed to be my opponent for the public defence. Your extensive expertise in contemporary Russia’s media system and media policies makes me honoured and excited to discuss my work with you. I send my warmest thanks to Janne ​ Matikainen, University Lecturer and Johanna Sumiala, Associate ​ ​ ​ Professor for their kind willingness to represent the grading committee during the public defence. I would like to say my thanks to Janne Matikainen also for some other ​ reasons. Back in 2011, Janne was my first employer at the University of Helsinki as a director of the Communication Research Centre CRC. That work was precious and, indeed, very much needed. I remember and greatly appreciate the time when I could bring my little son to Janne’s office and discuss our work with him while my child was playing or sleeping by my side. Our collaboration resulted in two co-authored papers and my work in the CRC as a whole was a great contribution to my research career.